Born in Penzance, Harold Harvey was the only Cornishman to play a significant role in both the Newlyn School and the Lamorna group. He and his wife, Gertrude, were close friends with many of the second generation artists, including Dod and Ernest Procter and Laura and Harold Knight.
The supermarket is sometimes characterised as a faceless place almost anti-community but the small to medium sized stores that serve smaller villages and towns can still feel 'local' with workers knowing and recognising many of the shoppers and families that use the shop. Here a grandmother stops to tie her grandaughter's shoelace.
'96 Tears' (installation view) Paul Conneally, Scaffold Gallery, Manchester, 2016
'96 Tears' is a piece in response to the question 'Where do our morals come from?' for the Scaffold Gallery show 'The Great Unanswered Vol III'.
It consists of 96 screenshots from the artists iPhone of photographs tagged #moral on the social media site Instagram - the 96 'most recent' posts tagged #moral. These were then each directly colour laser printed on a Xerox photocopier at A4 size, put in an envelope and sent to Will Marshall with some emailed suggestions about how they might me exhibited with the final decision left to him and colleagues at Scaffold. The result is a triptych of boards each with 32 tears pasted to them, the boards leant against the gallery walls rather than hung directly and flat to the walls.
The sound you should carry in your head or better still sing or hum as you view and interact with the work is the song '96 Tears' by ? and the Mysterians (1966). If you don't know the song here it is:
In an age where many including the artist spend hours viewing and interacting with screen based media we might consider to what extent the internet now informs our morals.
'96 Tears' takes images found in the digitally coded world and returns them to the chemically coded world. The images are time coded and might also be seen as a portrait of the artist as he sat on his sofa watching TV, searching Instagram on his iPhone at the same time for the most recent posts tagged #moral.
The passing on physically of the images through the postal system rather than by email or digital dropbox to Will Marshall, the curator at Scaffold Gallery, a gallery which itself has no permanent physical presence is an essential component of the work including the 'link and shift' inherent with the freedom given to Will to exhibit the works in a way that he felt best fitted the space, a space that was initially not decided when the work was first envisaged.
'96 Tears' (two panels of three) - Paul Conneally, Scaffold Gallery, Manchester, 2016
'96 Tears' (one panel of three) - Paul Conneally, Scaffold Gallery, Manchester, 2016
'96 Tears' (detail) - Paul Conneally, Scaffold Gallery, Manchester, 2016
All photographs are by Scaffold Gallery 2016
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This older lady doesn't want the bother of weaving in and out of the people walking La Croisette and chooses instead to take her chances with the automobiles and motorbikes along the boulevard itself. Even in the mid-summer heat she manages to maintain a certain style one that comes with confidence and a sense of purpose.
The public beaches in Cannes are truly egalitarian.
Everyone is welcome no matter their age, gender, race, sexuality, or body shape.
People have been coming to La Plage for generations and save for a few changes in fashion and technology the scene today is probably very similar to that of fifty years ago.
sand between her toes she writes for the tenth time 'wish you were here'
Little Onion
UPDATE: The decision of the Mayor of Cannes to institute and enforce a 'BURKINI BAN' on the beaches of Cannes makes the idea of them being egalitarian redundant. Terrible decision! Photograph: Paul Conneally, Cannes Plage, August 2016
In the early evening, families, groups of friends and couples gather on the public beaches of Cannes. Some bring food and drink others just take time out from walking La Croisette. Children build sandcastles and eat ice-creams.
This is a must see show at Espace Culturel in Mougins. Very intimate and curated beautifully. It's funny but because we are so accustomed to seeing Warhol and Warhol inspired images around us that it's easy to forget the power of seeing some of the original prints up close - the over printing - the textures of the black blocks for instance over printed by screen on the large Mick Jagger prints on show here .. and the Warhol works here juxtaposed with some of Arman's musical instrument sculptures - just great. It's a very small gallery but it's organisation and utilisation of space for this show is wonderful. Try and see it.
"The original Chateau de Mouans was built in 1504-1510 by Jean de Grasse, and remained in the Grasse family until 1750, when the Villeneuves took control. In 1572 the Pompée de Grasse was assinated, and in 1597 the chateau of Mouans was destroyed. It was rebuilt by Suzanne de Villeneuve, the widow of the Pompée de Grasse. Suffering various amounts of destruction and rebuilding over the centuries, the chateau has finally been rebuilt, especially following the original basic design with its rare triangular form and three towers.
Today the chateau houses an art museum, L'Espace de l'Art Concret, with 25 rooms and two resident artists."
Amphitrite stands at the entrance to the Porte Pierre Canto in Cannes. She is a statue by the sculptor Amaryllis Bataille and was installed in the year 2,000 to mark the new millennium.
Amphitrite was an Ancient Greek sea-goddess and wife of Poseidon.
She was seen as less the wife of but the consort of Poseidon, becoming a symbolic representation of the sea.
She is mentioned by Homer in The Odyssey: "moaning Amphitrite" nourishes fishes "in numbers past all counting" (Odyssey xii.119).
Standing 175 cm tall she welcomes sailors into Cannes' Port Pierre Canto and bids them good fortune when they leave to journey the Mediterranean and beyond.
To see her on foot you have to walk all the way out around the Port Canto from La Croisette past the many Super Yachts that berth there. In the height of summer it's a walk probably best done early morning or late afternoon to avoid the heat and rays of the midday sun.
The promenader on La Croisette in Cannes is prone to get hot, thirsty and sometimes even hungry as one walks, jogs, skates or cycles up and down this most famous of seafronts.
It's a good job then that there is a series of food and drink kiosks along its length and beyond right around to the public beaches of Cannes La Bocca. Each kiosk is numbered which is useful for meeting up with others or as an aide memoire to where you parked your car.
Kiosk Le 8 is situated near the merry-go-round at the Palais des Festivals end of La Croisette.
It's hard to resist something cold and sweet on a hot French Riviera summer's day:
the ice-cream seller points out the way to me with an ice-cream
Between around 7.30 and 10 in the morning is primetime for bathers, many of them middle to old age, on the public beaches of Cannes. It's fairly quiet at this time and the sun is warm without being burning hot. They come without ceremony and if getting changed do so under a handheld towel. Grandfathers and Grandmothers sometimes with their grandchildren but most often alone wading out into the warm shallows and beyond. And then it's up on to La Croisette for a coffee before a visit to the bakery for the first baguette buy of the day.
morning shadows
a swim first he thinks
then home for a shave
Laurence Jenkell's large candy sculptures have been a feature around Cannes, especially along La Croisette, for a few years now. The artist has had an obsession with the 'candy' form making many many variations on the same shape. She works from a studio in Vallouris, which is just outside Cannes and which plays host to many other artists too.
I like Jenkell's candy sculptures and don't tire of them but this presentation in the gardens of the Grand Hotel in Cannes is for me blighted by the over large text plaque featuring the artist's name and the contact for her gallery / agent. But then again this is Cannes.
After a long journey to the Port of Dover due to traffic chaos caused by 'increased security measures' put in place by the French border forces we are waved through without showing our passports and straight on to a waiting ferry.
summer haze
a gull crossing the channel
on a ship's mast
Little Onion
Photo: 'Onboard the Pride of Burgandy Cross Channel Ferry' Paul Conneally 2016
Was great to be working with Coach Karl Brown, a legend in English basketball, on To the Hoop a transition workshop with Year 6 pupils in Leicester Schools. A collaboration between Leicester City Council Community Safety Team, Leicester City Council Raising Achievement Team, Leicestershire Police, the PCC and Leicester City Schools. The sessions use sport, performance art, philosophy for children and best practice PSHE and Citizenship education to explore going up to secondary school and specifically knife crime and the law of joint enterprise.
Paul Conneally
Shenton Primary School
Leicester 2016
It's good to see that at least some 'little theatres' and their ilk continue to exist in some communities across the UK. I had the pleasure of giving a performative talk here at the Venture Theatre in Ashby de la Zouch before the first public community reading of the new audio drama 'The Winter Garden' by Matthew Pegg.
The theatre is tiny, cosy, and welcoming with a bar in the auditorium itself.
I hereby 'big up' Venture Theatre and the dedicated group that help run it for, in and with the community it sits in!
